Earth Wobble: Astronomy Professor Fixes Zodiac

I took a basic astronomy class in my undergrad days with a brilliant professor who worked on the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Life) project. I also had a brilliantly satiric TA who could explain physics in about 15 minutes. I clearly remember his ire at the 67% of students who couldn’t answer the question “Where is the International Date Line?” on a multiple choice midterm. He explained that the location “was not a place to go and pick up dates on a lonely Friday night.” That fact was very helpful to me.

But I digress. At some point during my science GEs, I discovered there were 13 signs. When the earth tilts, the sun moves into a different constellation.” So, after all these years, I find out the earth is not a little “tilty” but a little “wobbly.”

Who knew?

Astrologers disagree, of course, according to the Zodiac Facts blog, :

Ophiuchus has nothing to do with Astrology. It’s not an Astrology issue. It has to do with the stars—it’s not a sign, it’s a constellation,” said renowned Astrology expert and horoscope writer Rick Levine. There are four seasons each with a beginning, middle and end,” Levine added. “That makes 12 zodiac signs, and there’s no such thing as a 13th astrological sign.

Good to know. Now I can get to sleep tonight.

So, maybe there are 13 signs; but then again, maybe not, since astronomers relegated Pluto to a mere astroid.

The scientific discovery about a earth’s orbit wobbling (or tilting) still fascinates me. Of course, global warming deniers often use this fact to explain the changes in worldwide weather patterns. They’re a lot like astrologers.

Professor Parke Kunkle [yes, that’s his real name…] told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that the wobble of the Earth means that it is no longer aligned in the same way that it was thousands of years ago when the first astrological signs were drafted.

He said that while he does not believe in astrology, there could be a 13th sign, Ophiuchus.

After the news broke, it went viral on various sites, generating considerable buzz. On Google’s trend list at one point Thursday, searches pertaining to the story covered the top five.

The wobble, he said, is called “precession,” an astronomical term for the change in the earth’s axis every so often. Every 70 years or so, the planet shifts one degree, so imagine how much it has shifted over the past 3,000 years. [I’ll make an effort here: that’s ≈42.857°. Check my math. Please.]

Kunkle told The Associated Press that he doesn’t know why that his statements became an Internet sensation.

Astronomers have known about this since about 130 BC,” Kunkle told AP. He was sitting in his Minnesota office while the phone rang constantly. This is not new news. I have no idea why it went viral this time,” Kunkel told the agency. “Almost every astronomy class talks about it. His original statement to the Star-Tribune was “because of this change of tilt, the Earth is really over here in effect and Sun is in a different constellation than it was 3,000 years ago.”

But in the past 24 hours, he has been swamped with questions. It’s been an exhausting hoot,” he told the Star-Tribune.

American Federation of Astrologers spokesperson Shelley Ackerman said that the Kunkle statements should not prompt a change in one’s horoscope. “This doesn’t change your chart at all. I’m not about to use it,” she told AP. “I’ve told all of them not to worry about it. Every few years a story like this comes out and scares the living daylights out of everyone […be afraid, be very afraid…], but it’ll go away as quickly as it came.”

But if you did wish to change your sign, here’s how it would look. Note the 13th sign Ophiuchus:

Stella by Starlight. What would you expect?

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